In My Heart the Sun

In My Heart the Sun

For Silas

Next to me, a sleeping baby

the safety

of his hands near cheeks

the same place they were

when he was born

and though it’s raining

its heavy pattering on steel

I can hear his soft breathing

his contentedness, his innocence

so lovely under all this

this morning

now this

this thunderstorm

seeming so closely violent,

the quick occlusion

of light

leaving

only a memory

of the stillness of

this summer morning

where we walked within

the softness of warm

fog that muted detail and distilled

this life into silhouette,

a few lines as whole

within this

as I changed his diaper

felt the softness of his belly on my cheek

told him how

this was the way I saw

the mountain

the morning of his birth

looking out,

thinking it would be the last

I would see it through these eyes

as I closed the door

to become a mother

I told him how

my golden sequins

seemed to glow

under that morning

under that fog

how someone from a distance

might of thought us light itself

and how I held the sea

roses, magenta, aglow

and how I rubbed the petals

between my fingers

so we’d have something lovely

to fall back on,

always,

the scent of

how I looked up once more

hand on him

and whispered into fog’s depth

I love you

I can’t wait to walk through the world with you

And I didn’t know how

it would change

as we walked through this life together

but how I thought it would

if giving life

is as transformative

as watching death

then the difference would be more

than the subtle newness of day

and so it all seems so close

to this: how within me there is

always the quiet of that morning

and yet, too, this sudden storm

inseparable,

this heavy-lightness of having

in my heart the sun

the rain

even the very seed

the most complex simplicity

and here,

right here, the breathing

the very breath of a baby

---

Still Within Each Other

still within each other

for Jay

You’re gone

there, at sea

perhaps only a horizon,

distant thought of here, of me

though I’d like to think

you’ve seen me, my

silhouette somewhere in the wake

somewhere in the line

between sleep and dream

as I see you cast into this

winter sky, this shallow light

these familiar trees, always

you, it seems, standing there

as something more than memory,

you’re so far away that all I have is wish

and I wish you could see me today

as something more than picture

something more than transposition

something more than reflection,

than subtle dissipating fragments

because today I see myself as more

than a filament of doubt left by mother

I see something more of this light

and perhaps if you were here you’d

see in my eyes what I rarely see

and you’d fathom another depth of me

  yet perhaps you see me always

as whole, as something more

than I see myself, than this

sadness from a mother who worked too much

who tried to love and did but was tired

and you see, this is what I’ve been seeing

when I look down at my pregnant body

I see myself as her, her never seeing herself

as something that could be enough

as something whole, as something of depth

and now this, this heartbeat within me

has brought me to see a certain grace

and I feel untangled from a part of her

though I was once a pulse within her

as she was within her mother and

I wonder if she looked at her pregnant skin

And saw something more than a mirror

reflection within of a mother who clung

to bitterness, who left her with this,

this fragment of an unexplored self

that grew as concentric circles in water

unknowingly expanding toward distant horizons

and you see, though you can’t see me,

today I feel separated from mother after mother

and have shared with this other

this exploring, this pulse of earth

this feeling of rock and snow and happiness

in the depth of a mountain’s silhouette

and I just want you to see my cheeks

after the cold, and notice how my hair

held the snow in its curl, and how it shaped

my face and how when I looked down

I felt beautiful and loved and seen

as though you heard me hundreds of miles away

and reached out your hands to brush my wet hair

behind my ear, to warm my cheeks, to kiss my lips

to make our hearts beat a little quicker

as we, so distant, are still within each other

---

Though there seemed a vastness in the night sky, there existed within it a space as enclosed and tranquil as this distant landscape framed by nearby pines.  And though my route to reach this narrowing space might appear the same day to day, it is part of this natural world and part of a rambling mind, and thereby filled with such intricacies and changes.  There is a certain comfort in choosing the same approach, as it becomes meditative.  My mind can relinquish to the grace of breath and movement and being.  Today the air was winter-thick,—damp and warm—,and here it smelled richly of evergreen.  I thought of how many times I’ve arrived at the same place, and how many times I’ve arrived alone.  I thought of how many times I’ve looked into that distance, through these trees, between those mountain silhouettes, and felt a sense of awe.  Yet today, 22 weeks pregnant, I could feel the slight movement of another body within me, and had such a clear realization that I was sharing this heart’s experience of night and light and rock and mountains and breath so intimately with another.  It was the first time in my pregnancy I was able to feel as though I wasn’t just a replica of my own mother, bound to repeat a cycle.  I wanted you, there at sea, to see me as I experienced this.  I wanted to look at you and tell you what I felt as I looked into tonight’s night sky, and I suppose I did, because this love does have a way of drawing something so distant, so close, so as to be so beautifully enclosed within.

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